


Bring On the East Wind

by ljs



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 15:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2697881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world just a half-step off <i>Sherlock</i> canon (where Anthea and Mycroft are a couple) and a happier future than might be expected of <i>The Thick of It</i>, with Malcolm Tucker and Nicola Murray together; an interstitial fic to explain the conclusion of Sherlock 3X03 "His Last Vow."</p>
<p>Of two power-couples, their different designs for living, and brilliant ideas; Or, Mycroft has a problem, and he calls in a foul-mouthed Scottish former Communications Director for assistance.</p>
<p>Warning for language appropriate for <i>The Thick of It</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring On the East Wind

_Two guests for dinner tonight, darling. 7:30 pm. Anni’s done the food. MH_

As Anthea got out of the town-car in front of their St James flat, she sighed and put her phone in her pocket. Mycroft was not a man for casual entertaining at home on a whim, so there was some sort of work involved – or more likely it involved Sherlock, since Mycroft usually met government contacts at the office or the Diogenes and the younger Holmes had been so recently wounded. In any event, she should –

Phone buzzed. She brought it back out.

_It’s the Leader of the Opposition and her consort, by the way. MH_

Anthea was not a woman who usually swore, but in this case– “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said under her breath, and viciously jabbed her key in the lock of their hidden outer door.

The imminent arrival of Malcolm Tucker was enough to elicit such language in the most controlled of women.

When Mycroft got home at 7, she was changed, perfumed, and glaring at the beautifully set table in their dining room. She thought she had covered her irritation, but he instantly said, “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Never mind, darling. I assume you have your reasons,” she said, and came to him, and kissed him with a force that belied her words.

“I do,” he said, “and I don’t like it any more than you, my dear.”

“Fair enough.” She absently brushed back the remnant of his centre curl. “Drink before dinner?”

“God, yes. Open the 1982 Petrus, I’m going to need it.” He kissed her this time, and then headed off toward their bedroom.

He was worried, she thought, if he was letting her see his disquiet – and if he was letting Tucker, and, yes, Nicola Murray, into their home, something terrible was in train.

As she pulled the bottle out of their wine refrigerator and opened it to breathe, she contemplated the mystery of Murray and Tucker. The woman had seemed a vague, anxiously incompetent figure when she’d initially been named Minister of Social Affairs and Citizenship, and even as she’d risen to power the first time, she’d been a bumbler; still, in the years after her first resignation she had positioned herself as a stronger, smarter leader than one would have originally thought, one that the party in power feared. In fact Anthea had sat in on a few Parliamentary briefings regarding MI5’s role in various anti-terrorism initiatives, and Murray had been cleverer and sharper than the other MPs and Ministers there. Tucker, meanwhile, had been the Communications Director and scourge of Downing Street until a damning fall from grace and a brief stay in prison – but then, a year ago, Murray (a divorcee) had given a press conference in which she had confirmed tabloid rumours that she was now living with Tucker, who had stood behind her looking suitably chastened and reformed in his slightly too big grey suit. The spin –for both of them -- had been masterful. He had been accepted back in the fold and now was working as a PR consultant to two large cancer charities, Anthea knew.

Back when she had been Mycroft’s PA, however, she had enjoyed (if that was the word) the Malcolm Tucker Experience when he and Mycroft had clashed in Whitehall. Could such venomous competence really be re-channeled into good works? Could he really be back?

Mycroft emerged, freshly showered and armoured, just as Anthea was pouring the wine. His hand went to the small of her back, fingertips a warm pressure she could feel through the silk of her top. “I forgot to ask when I came in. How was your meeting on the St Albans situation?”

“As if you didn’t already know,” she said, and leaned back to rest her head against his shoulder. He sighed and kissed the top of her head. She continued, “Any briefing notes, sir?”

He chuckled at her deliberately cheeky tone. “No, my dear. I’ll take Mr Tucker into the study for a brief colloquy before starters. The rest of the time we’ll just pretend we like them.”

“Anything for you, darling,” she said, and handed him his glass of wine just as the doorbell rang.

“In the Hall of the Mountain King,” Mycroft’s idea of a joke, had never seemed so apropos.

After Mycroft had gone down to collect them – Nicola Murray being somewhat notorious for her claustrophobia, so the secret staircase was in order – they all gathered in the dining room. Murray looked exhausted, Anthea thought, which was borne out by her eager “Love a glass of wine, thanks” upon its offer. Tucker accepted his glass, swirled it about and sniffed it in the approved manner, sipped, and then said genially, “The good stuff, straight from Apollo’s sunbaked fucking loins. Must be one fucking enormous favour you’re planning on asking, Mycroft. Is it from me or the missus?”

Mycroft’s smile was almost normal: Anthea detected only a very slight contemptuous curl to one side of his mouth. “You, Malcolm. A word in my study, if you would?”

“Oh, I so very fucking much would,” Tucker said, and sauntered out in Mycroft’s straight-backed wake.

Murray looked after them, sighed, and then looked at Anthea. “Would it be all right if I sit down?”

“Of course. Please do.” Anthea indicated a chair on one side of the table set for four, and then sat down herself at what would pass for the foot of the table.

Murray sank into her assigned seat and then drank deep. When she emerged, she rolled her shoulders back and then looked at Anthea. “Any idea what your Mr Holmes wants?”

“None.” _Unfortunately_ , Anthea thought.

Murray’s eyes went disconcertingly sharp. “No clue whether it’s government or family? Heard there’s something going on with his younger brother.”

Anthea smiled. “No clue at all.”

“Not that you would tell me, right,” Murray said. “Fine. You’re a spook anyway, you people don’t answer questions. Except – are you stuck in at Five now, or do you plan to go back to Vauxhall Cross any time soon? Moving up, I mean. Because I feel sure Harry Pearce is never going to fucking retire, no matter what he says in front of the all-bloody-seeing eyes of the Parliamentary Committee on Sneaking the Fuck About.”

Anthea felt an urge to laugh – oh, Murray had learned well the art of cursing from her consort -- but repressed it. “I may well move over the river, yes. More wine?”

………………………………  
Mycroft leaned back in his desk chair. “Well?”

Malcolm Tucker took another sip of wine contemplatively. Then, “You sure you want to be kept out of it? Free of all details great and bloody small?”

Mycroft rocked once in his chair, equally contemplative. “Yes. You are, after all, reformed, aren’t you? You can be trusted?”

The question hung heavy in the study, its silence broken only by the ticking of the long-case clock in the corner – and then the soft Westminster chimes marking the three-quarter hour. Tucker waited until the last strike to answer, “Close enough for fucking government work. Why the fuck not.”

“But it’s not government work,” Mycroft said. There was another silence, one long enough to let the dead dance. “Right. I’ll text you when and if I need the situation…handled.”

Tucker raised his wine glass. “And then I’ll blow up the whole fuckstinking place, metaphorically speaking.”

Solemnly they clinked their glasses and drank to sign the compact.  
……………………………….

After a dinner that somehow managed to be pleasant, in no small part thanks to their housekeeper’s way with bouillabaisse and Mycroft’s opening a fine bottle of California Pinot Noir to accompany it, Anthea and Mycroft saw off their dinner guests. As soon as the surveillance cameras confirmed the town-car was gone, she turned to him.

“Will I be told when whatever nefarious plan you’ve set in motion comes to pass?” she asked, loosening his tie as she did.

“You’ll likely deduce it yourself, darling.” He leaned into her touch and rested his hands on her waist.

“Fine. Will it spoil Christmas?”

He hid his smile against her lips. They kissed for a long moment there in the foyer, in the quiet on the other side of the camera.

Then, stepping back, she gave him a wry smile. “I’ll take that as a Maybe, then.”

“Surely not. Not that you’ll be in England anyway, thanks to our good friends in Red Square. And let us hope the plan never is needed.” Mycroft nipped her ear in a very promising way – just as their mobiles went off simultaneously. Together they sighed, and he said, “Rain check on this, shall we say, negotiation?”

Anthea glanced at her phone and then back to him. “Meet you in bed at 10:30, unless national disaster or the east wind strikes. Forget your pyjamas.”

“It shall be my very great pleasure, my dear.”  
………………………………………..

The night was shot through with light, Nicola thought as the town car neared their home. It was beautiful out there, all the hard edges lost in dark. But inside the car -- 

“I don’t trust that smile,” she said.

Malcolm laughed, which she found no more comforting than the smile. “Can’t a man fucking smile to himself after two glasses of wine –“

“Three.”

“Two and a half if we split the difference, and some world-class fishy stew, and the promise of a shag later?”

“Who said you were getting a shag?” she said, but her hand went to his inner thigh and squeezed.

“Who said I was asking you?” His hand went to _her_ thigh, and then under her skirt –

Then her mobile rang, the tone for her youngest child who should be safely home with his father, and Jerry the driver said “Here we are,” and the moment was broken.

She answered the phone as Malcolm helped her out of the car. “Yes, darling. Everything all right?....Er, yes, right, right here.” She handed the phone to Malcolm. “Apparently it’s for you.”

Jesus God, how did she manage to find herself living a life in which her children had given her partner the charming nickname of “Satan.”

As they went up the front steps to their flat, she tried not to overhear the conversation he was having, something about “practicing your bollocking face.” Jesus actual God.

Once they were inside the flat, Malcolm handed the mobile back. “No worries with the sprout. Bit of a bullying problem, completely sorted.”

“I didn’t really want to know.” She glanced down. Two texts from her PA, one from bloody Ollie, neither urgent, but she knew she had three briefing folders to get through by tomorrow morning. “I’ve an hour or two of work before bed.”

“Me too,” he said with that untrustworthy grin. “Race you to the sofa.”

Ten minutes to change into her comfiest clothes, and she was enthroned against the armrest at one end of the sofa with her herbal tea and her briefing folders before he’d finished peeling one of his fucking omnipresent oranges. “You lose,” she said as he strolled in with his laptop and his plate of denuded citrus.

“We’ll just see what the winner gets, eh?” He did something with his eyebrows which she shouldn’t find hot, but she was weak where he was concerned. Then he nudged her leg with his knee. “Budge over, darling, don’t be a fucking sofa-hog.”

“You are an arse, always have been, always will be,” she said as she scooted back.

He took his usual place – leaning back against the opposite armrest, stretching out his impossibly long legs and sliding one in between hers – then reached for his reading glasses and the remote.

“Oh, don’t,” she said in their usual ritual.

The TV went on anyway: BBC World News. “You’re the fucking Leader of the Opposition, you need to keep informed,” he said. “Don’t be an ignorant twat, it doesn’t suit you.”

“It’s World Sport Today, Malcolm. I don’t need to know about golf in South Bloody Africa in order to fight yet another fucking cut in benefits the Fucking Scrooge McDucks in power want.”

His frown softened, as it always did when she reaffirmed the values they shared, and he lowered the volume on the TV. “Headlines will be on in fifteen minutes. Just read your briefing material, right?”

She patted his sock-clad foot, which he’d curled over her thigh, and went back to her reading.

After she finished her first two briefing packets, however, she looked up. Malcolm was sucking absently on an orange slice and gazing at his laptop. Malcolm Tucker. Malcolm Fucking Dark-Lord Tucker.

He looked like himself again, like the man who’d harried her through her time as Minister, worse, the man who’d savaged her so completely during that horrible time of backstabbing and regrets. But in the lamplight she saw too the man she’d seen when she went to visit him in the open prison to which he’d been assigned. When he’d walked into the visiting space, he’d looked vulnerable and tired and wary, and “What the fuck are you doing here, Nicola?” had been the first words out of his mouth.

She had put her hands on the table between them and said the bare truth of it. “I couldn’t stay away. Thing is, Malcolm, and much as I fucking hate to say it… you’re mine. Teacher, nightmare, monster. But mine.” She’d not quite smiled. “I’m going to bring you back.”

He’d stared at her for an eternity, there in that morgue-cold place. Then his eyes had softened. “Yeah,” he’d said quietly. “As much as I fucking hate to confirm it – yeah. I’m your chap, darling. God help you.”

A slightly painful nudge from his foot roused her from her reverie. “What are you doing, woman? Dreaming? You’ve another fucking packet to get through.”

“Oh, right.” But she didn’t pick up the last folder.

His sigh was theatrically disgusted. “Bloody fucking hell, darling, what is it?”

She silently took his foot and began to pass the heel of her hand over his sole. He wriggled for a moment – ticklish, and an absolute fucking slut for a footrub – then went still. She looked at their connection rather than his face. She started an internal count – 

On her silent count of three he roared, “What the actual fucking fuck is it?”

And then she did look, and smile. “Just thinking about how right it was to bring you back.”

His whole expression changed, the way it had when she’d kissed him in the back of the taxi in which she’d collected him from prison: soft, beautiful eyes and mouth in that blade of a face. “That’s my girl,” he said, and his laptop went onto the coffee table. He wriggled out of her hold and then pounced, so that she slid down on her back and he was on her, warm and real. His voice had gone husky. “You’re my girl, and I’m your….”

She’d already levered herself up onto her elbows for his kiss, but instead he stared off over her head, as if his gaze was drawn moth-like to the table lamp.

“Malcolm!”

“Bringing back…. Oh that’s fucking _genius_! Right, yes, that’s it!” He kissed her, hard but absentmindedly, and rolled off her. “Where’s that buggering laptop, I’ve got some fucking work to do.”

Sighing, she scooted back to her working posture. “You are not even remotely getting a shag tonight,” she said under her breath.

“Yeah, I am,” he said from his own place on the sofa, and he grinned at her. “And so are you, because you just gave me the fucking _best_ idea.”

………………………..

A few weeks later, Mycroft Holmes put his exiled younger brother on a plane bound for death. By all rights he should have been distraught, but he’d remained cold and calm throughout the political and administrative wrangling it’d taken to get Sherlock to that point.

He’d called in an expert, after all.

As soon as the flight was aloft, he checked his phone: a text message from a burner. _Fuckstinking place about to explode. Hope you like it._

And as the face of dead Jim Moriarty took over every television in the country, Mycroft internally applauded the expert’s work.

Jim Moriarty wasn’t back, but Malcolm Tucker was. Bring on the east wind.


End file.
